Obama wrong about oil imports to U.S.

By Catharine Richert
Published on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 3:41 p.m.

Related rulings:

"We import more oil today than ever before."

Barack Obama, Monday, July 6th, 2009.

Ruling: False | Details

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A worker operates valves at an oil and gas facility near Basra, Iraq.

In an interview with Novaya Gazeta , a Russian newspaper, President Barack Obama was asked what caused the economic crisis. Obama answered that oil imports were partly to blame.
 
"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he said in the July 6, 2009, interview. "We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before."
 
Obama said the same thing on February 24, 2009, during his first address to Congress.
 
At first, it sounded plausible to us that the United States would be importing more oil these days. But as our friends at FactCheck.org first pointed out , crude oil and petroleum imports have actually declined in recent years after peaking in 2005 and 2006. FactCheck cites the Energy Information Administration, a branch of government that keeps an enormous database of all things energy-related, and we confirmed it on the EIA's Web site. So we gave Obama a False .